EY paid by government to push agendas of its clients

But if you take a look at EY’s pages of “thought leadership” on the energy transition, and its even longer client list, it’s hard to conclude the government (or planet) is its primary customer.

EY’s latest climate change action report – “Creating a nature-positive advantage” – heavily promotes the economic benefits of carbon offsets, which will allow the fossil fuel industry to keep going strong into 2050, the report suggests, as well as creating a new export market for Australia.

But as is often the way in such reports, what was left out of EY’s said much more than what was included.

The environmental benefits, or lack thereof, of offsetting emissions rather than just cutting them didn’t warrant consideration (it would be useless to clients such as Santos, after all). Neither did growing evidence that land sector offset methods such as avoided clearing, regenerative agriculture or soil carbon capture aren’t worth the paper they’re registered on.

However, at least EY did consider these issues long enough to dismiss them, pointing to findings by “independent experts” appointed to review the credits, after former Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee chairman Andrew Macintosh’s claim that up to 80 per cent of the offsets approved by the regulator were shams.

“The Chubb Review recommendations should improve transparency and confidence”, the EY report reads.

Here lies the biggest omission of all: EY failed to disclose in the main body of the review that one of the report’s authors, EY operative Steve Hatfield-Dodds, was also an “independent expert” on Ian Chubb’s review board. You have to scroll to the 45th end note on page 83 of the report to find that EY is basically praising analysis it fed into.

The point is the consulting firm regularly goes into bat for offsets – it’s even the platinum sponsor for the annual conference of the Carbon Market Institute, which is Australia’s main offset lobby group – even as the government and public organisations pay it for “independent” advice on the credibility of that market and its role in the energy transition.

EY’s self-styled role as Australia’s de facto climate change policy and regulation expert goes beyond the federal government, too.

It provided the research that ultimately paved the way for NSW to back Santos’ Narrabri project in 2021. The firm pocketed $67,000 from taxpayers for this piece of work, but failed to disclose that it was also raking in $5.66 million annually for audit, tax and assurance work for Santos.

How surprising that the NSW government’s Future of Gas report, which the EY research fed into, praised Narrabri as “critical” to the state’s economic development and “significant” to securing gas supply no less than 21 times in just 16 pages!

The Victorian agriculture department has also tapped EY for help advising farmers on how to model and abate its emissions.

“We can help you turn disruption into opportunity,” EY promises clients at the end of the nature-positive advantage report. And who could doubt it.